Stonehenge through the ages: Exhibit brings builders to life
ABC News
A new exhibition at the British Museum in London aims to shed new light on the ancient Stonehenge monument and on the people who built it
LONDON -- For a monument that has been drawing crowds for thousands of years, Stonehenge still holds many secrets.
The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago on a windswept plain in southwest England. Its purpose is still debated: Was it a solar calculator, a cemetery, a shrine?
A new exhibition at the British Museum in London unravels some of the mystery — Stonehenge was, at times, all those things. But the exhibition's bigger goal is bringing to life the sun-worshipping and surprisingly sophisticated people who built it.
“We all feel we know Stonehenge,” lead curator Neil Wilkin said Tuesday. “We drive past it on A303 (the highway), and we visit as schoolchildren or bring our kids to see it. But often we don’t know much, or feel like we don’t know much, about the world, the people who built the monument and who came to worship at the monument.”
